Stub Mandrel

Hawkwind at Glasgow O2 on Sunday. Not particularly loud, but very good sound and excellent visuals. Crowd full of diehard Hawkwind fans, lots of singing along, lots of friendly reminiscing about past Hawkwind tours and lineups with random strangers 🙂 Tim Blake was with them and his theremin playing was astounding. Niall Hone is no slouch on bass either. Support Blackheart Orchestra were 'different' in a good way, they went down very well. Of course I turned out to be the only person wearing a labcoat... mind you my sister in law had a pair of wings on and my brother was wearing his kilt and cyberpunk goggles. Quite funny when security searched his sporran and found his migraine medication! Songs from Hurry on Sundown to the latest album including Master of the Universe, Shouldn't Do That, Spirit of the Age and Motorway City. Must be tough picking a representative set from 50 years of back catalogue. Good fun was had by all.

Hmm. If I hear that 'Urine Leakage' song one more time I'm going to get an earworm...

Song like that needs a sophisticated video...

Exactly, just wear it a bit further down your arm say 50mm ish.

How many foreign language bands do you count among your favourites? Rammstein, Nina, Plastic Bertrand? 'nuff said.

It's on version 3 now, feels a bit less fun, with more facts and fewer examples and they lost the 'spot the deliberate mistake' sections which are my favourite bit of the second edition.

Nicer than the new 'unbranded' Chinese made guitars with Steinberger stickers...

Curiously apt...

P.P. Arnold 🙂

Li'l devil by the cult, if you can master playing the same note eight times in a row...

If your thumb is painful or uncomfortable a tip I got recently (which works really well and fast) is to get an elastic elbow support and wear it rather low down so it compresses the upper part of your forearm. My brother was advised to do this by a physio. Might help you relax the thumb and press less hard.

There are lyrics and lyrics is the answer. There are deep and emotional songs, there are entertaining songs, amusing songs and there are those where the lyrics are effectively meaningless. And some prog has wonderful lyrics: Standing on a golf course Dressed in P.V.C. I chanced upon a golf girl Selling cups of tea She asked me did I want one Asked me with a grin For three pence you can buy one Full right to the brim So of course I had to have one In fact I ordered three So I could watch the golf girl Could see she fancied me And later on the golf course After drinking tea It started raining golf balls And she protected me Her name was Pat And we sat under a tree She kissed me We go for walks In fine weather All together On the golf course We talk in Morse

There was a time when I wasn't sure which band I had seen most often - Hawkwind or the Stranglers 🙂 Still with Berxit I suppose it will be Euroman Go-eth...

Hawkwind at Glasgow 02 for my birthday on Friday.

I used to work with a guy who had lived in the house with black and white tiles on the bathroom walls that inspired the Two Tone logo, some time after Jerry Dammers had moved on.

No, you're never too old to Rock'n'Roll if you're too young to die After a 23-year gap for the purpose of generating a family and getting into debt, I'm back in a band again. And it's great. And my playing has transformed over this year.

Sorry, I think it's just introducing more faff for minimal benefit. Plus, in a live context there are times when you want to change the tempo to suit the way the gig is going; if everyone's up and dancing but you still want to play that ballad, pep up the tempo a bit 🙂 If someone can't count accurately maybe they need help, but I've never been in a band where we couldn't judge tempo accurately enough.

And one of mine.

It's the drummers who can't count at all you want to worry about...

Only if the other band members can't be relied on to get the right tempo. We all make mistakes but we all ought to be able to get the tempo right 99 times out of 100?

<SOB> I confess, I've bought a Stagg Uke. It cost £13(!) for an all-wood one, less than the cost of my clip tuner. Sounds tinny and thin compared to my bro's £30 plastic bodied Makala (which sounds almost as good as his Gretsch Uke), needed lots of work on the nut and the strings won't settle down. He says get decent strings.

My mistake - I know the origins of the name, but I was under the mistaken impression the first JV guitars were branded "Fender" with a small "Squire Series" decal, but apparently it was spelled "Squier" on those too.

Interesting question. In practice 99% of the time it's 'transparent' and you wouldn't notice it's there. What does notice is that low frequency handling noise, like placing your palm over the strings or thumping the body is drastically reduced or eliminated. So it definitely protects the rig against those low transients. I don't know if it gives much extra headroom as at home the master volume on the Trace doesn't get above 1.5 and the Ashdown 500 at the rehearsal studio doesn't even get to 12 because we are old farts who don't want to damage our hearing (further).

Also Fenders being produced at that time had dire quality control issues so there's a real chance that any random contemporary Fender made in America won't be as good... <edit> A bit more detail... it seems that QC problems in the USA led to major factory changes which meant supply couldn't meet demand. The manufacturing in Japan wasn't originally aimed at producing inferior 'copies' but rather making up up for the shortage of US-made instruments while they sorted things out, which took several years. Follow the links above for more details.

Handy suggestion, although the slope wont be as steep as it's only a 2-pole instead of 4-pole filter, could have other related uses or be cascaded with a 2-pole filter. Also, it's a passive filter followed by a boost stage rather than an active filter, but that probably wouldn't make a big difference.